Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, The Color Purple is the moving story of a young woman's endurance of shame and suffering to become whole and to know God. The novel became an instant classic and has been adapted into a film and musical. Paired here with The Temple of My Familiar, which the author describes as “a romance of the last 500,000 years,” this edition brings together two works that established Walker as a major voice in modern fiction.

First published in 1990, The Temple of My Familiar, Alice Walker's follow-up novel to her iconic The Color Purple, spent more than four months on the New York Times Bestseller list and was hailed by critics as a “major achievement” (Chicago Tribune).

Described by the author as “a romance of the last 500,000 years,” The Temple of My Familiar follows a cast of interrelated characters, most of African descent, and each representing a different ethnic strain—ranging from diverse African tribes to the mixed bloods of Latin America—that contribute to the black experience in America.

“[Alice Walker] has transcended expectations in her response to September 11. Sent by Earth . . . is simple, practical, and beyond argument.”—The New Yorker, on Sent by Earth

“There is only one daughter, one father, one mother, one son, one aunt or uncle, one dog . . . or goat in the Universe, after all: the one right in front of you.”—From Overcoming Speechlessness

In 2006 Alice Walker, working with Women for Women International, visited Rwanda and the eastern Congo to witness the aftermath of the genocide in Kigali. Invited by Code Pink, an antiwar group working to end the Iraq War, Walker traveled to Palestine/Israel three years later to view the devastation on the Gaza Strip. Here is her testimony.

Bearing witness to the depravity and cruelty, she presents the stories of the individuals who crossed her path and shared their tales of suffering and courage. Part of what has happened to human beings over the last century, she believes, is that we have been rendered speechless by unusually barbaric behavior that devalues human life. We have no words to describe what we witness. Self-imposed silence has slowed our response to the plight of those who most need us, often women and children, but also men of conscience who resist evil but are outnumbered by those around them who have fallen victim to a belief in weapons, male or ethnic dominance, and greed.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Alice Walker is the author of more than thirty books including The Color Purple and Sent by Earth. Her writings have been translated into more than two dozen languages. From her essays concerning the civil rights movement to cries for intervention on the Gaza Strip, Walker continually and eloquently calls attention to ignored injustices around the world.

Introduced by Alice Walker and with a preface by Cuban poet Nancy Morejón, this book includes excerpts from diaries and letters from and to children, wives, and parents of the five Cubans imprisoned in the United States for “espionage,” providing a glimpse of how ordinary families strive to maintain connections in extraordinary circumstances.

It also includes a succinct legal analysis of the case by attorney Leonard Weinglass, outlining how it has significantly violated both international law and the US Constitution.

It’s a book about human dignity and hope, with echoes of the Elian González controversy and the Rosenberg case, blurbed by Angela Davis, Nadine Gordimer, and Mumia Abu-Jamal.